Cuba: Permit Me To Disagree

Cuba: Permit me to disagree

Two kinds of problems arise in the recent changes made in the Cuban government, some of form, others of content.

Regarding the former, neither Raúl nor Fidel, or any other official, have taken into account the need to make room for an economic alternative other than the existing one that depends on rules dictated by the market forces, or, for that matter, the need to introduce economic methods based on direct democracy and self-management, where the Cuban citizens-producers would play a more active role as much in decision-making as in the implementation of what is decided thereby.

More centralization, more institutionalization, more resolutions coming from the pinnacle of power, and more wartime-like economics has been the motto, and even the ousting of Pérez Roque and Lage were made, it has been said, to create a more functional structure of government, which reveals unspoken criticism leveled at the typical voluntarism practiced both by those seen as Fidel’s men and by Fidel himself.

That way Cuba has taken some sort of step toward the Chinese path… which we all know where it ended. In other words, a strong power underpinned by its single monolithic party that tries to steer its way into a pragmatic opening to the capitalistic market in order to modernize the country’s economy, increase labor productivity and reduce production costs without too much heed to the social consequences.

However, Cuba is not China, as it has a small, if highly educated, population with a low birth rate and a history of poor productivity, unable to resort to huge amounts of foreign capital because of its very limited domestic market and the lack of a powerful and wealthy Cuban nationalistic bourgeoisie overseas which might be willing to invest in the island.

To cap it all off, a relative shortage of young people makes labor more expensive and, truth be told, Cubans are not easily satisfied, since the Revolution taught them to protest and demand. Furthermore, Cuba can’t just apply the Chinese recipe in the middle of a terrible worldwide crisis which is bound to become worse.

So much for the problems of form: rather than democratize the country, laying the foundations of a government planned from the bottom up by workers’ councils and sidelining the State’s bureaucratic apparatus, the Cuban establishment chose to have a go at the utopian purpose of rationalizing red tape and make the arbitrariness and squandering typical of any vertical system even more effective.

Moreover, I also differ on other points: why weren’t these problems happening in the highest circles informed to or discussed with the men and women in the street?

Instead of presenting the people with a number of faits accomplis, unexplained and obscure as befits a government-owned media which fearful of critical thinking and prone to underestimate the workers’ level of comprehension, why weren’t the merits and flaws of each leader publicly debated?

If the foreign minister and the vice-president of the Council of Ministers misbehaved and misused their status, as hinted in the press release, how responsible are their fellow leaders, starting with Fidel and Raúl?

If they were comrades in the said statement, and kept their high-ranking positions in the Political Bureau, the Central Committee and the government up until they announced their resignation in regrettable Stalin-like self-critical notices where they admit to mistakes not even mentioned, why does Fidel Castro, by whose side they worked for many years, say they became greedy and unworthy men who fed on the sweet nectar of power and had thus played into the hands of the enemy?

Do Raúl and the political and state leaders call comrades and invest powers in unworthy potential traitors, as Fidel tagged them, or is he (Fidel) using their statements to wreck another line –the victorious one?

Was the remark thrown over to Michelle Bachelet about vindicating Bolivia’s right to an outlet to the sea just a gaffe or an internal maneuver about an issue the Cuban government had decided to hush while awaiting for the Chilean president’s visit to consolidate his comeback to the Latin American stage?

Is the uncalled-for anger oozing from Fidel’s statements a symptom of old age or a camouflaged political torpedo destined to keep the various bureaucratic factions –the victors, the centralist military brass, and the vanquished– from engaging in a certain modus vivendi?

What does such cloaked goings-on in the upper echelons have to do with the battle of ideas, that is, with the socialist moral and political education (a task which Raúl has just assigned to the former chief of police Ramiro Valdés)?

What was discussed with Hugo Chávez? The possibility that Venezuela may be forced to cut down on the assistance he gives to Cuba given the fall in oil prices and Cuba’s necessity to take immediate economic action as a result?

Why not disclose and hold an open discussion about Cuba’s outlook and future tasks, especially now that it’s making preparations to hold the Party Congress and restructure the State apparatus?

Are by any chance the moral lynching of leaders who are answerable to and controlled by collective bodies a blow to the ethics of the Party’s rank and file and the respect they deserve?

Socialism cannot break away from democracy, and democracy requires freedom of information and forthright discussion of ideas and proposals.

Bureaucratic secrecy opens your flank to the enemy no less served by those who are always ready to welcome whatever comes down from the state Olympus and spit today on those who until yesterday were their leaders. It’s criminal, particularly in difficult times, to mislead, misinform and depoliticize those who will have to put their creativity, understanding and effort to good use in order to overcome hardship.

Meta

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